El Rico

What happens when a stuntman, actor/director and screenwriter walk into a Gold Coast bar? They come up with the concept for an action fantasy film that is already raising eyebrows in Hollywood no joke. Rene Perrin, Avelino `El Rico' Lescot and Susan Macguillicuddy are the trio behind The Black Sun, which recently took out the Most Ambitious Screenplay award at the 2015 International Action on Film Festival in Los Angeles.

The locals are hoping the added hype surrounding their screenplay will push the project into production and attract the eye of distributors. Lescot, a Gold Coast-based actor, stuntman and filmmaker who has worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Peter Pan and The Condemned, said The Black Sun incorporates several genres.

``It's enchanting and mystical,'' he said.
``It's a gypsy, action, adventure, romance, western with a strong supernatural feel that is set in the Pacific Islands, Mexico, China, New Zealand and here.
``At the moment the film industry needs something different but financially manageable and that's The Black Sun.''

He said The Black Sun's `twist ending' had helped draw attention to the project. The film follows a warrior's worldwide journey on the Matariki boat, which Lescot said is `like another star of the film'. Lescot and Perrin have an impressive international fanbase thanks to the success of their action film Among Dead Men. It won several awards for best fight choreography and generated considerable profits in DVD sales in Canada, Germany, Thailand, Cambodia, Poland, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Hong Kong. It also grossed several times its $7000 budget in DVD sales through Walmart in the US. Perrin, who has worked as a stunt performer on films such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Daybreakers, Nim's Island, Fool's Gold and Ghost Ship, said they wanted to combine their `love of action with a love of romance' in The Black Sun.

Balancing out the testosterone on the team is screenwriter Susan Macguillicuddy. Despite having worked with the likes of Cate Blanchett, Jessica Alba, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffiths, Macguillicuddy said working with `the boys' on The Black Sun has been her `most cherished writing experience'.

``It's like we each started at one end of the canvas and worked our way to the middle, fine-tuning the parts of the script we liked,'' she said.
``It took us about a year and hundreds of meetings but we're happy with the finished product.
``We wanted to do something very avant garde with the genre and something new.
``Getting the Most Ambitious Screenplay award means we really pushed the genre, which is what we set out to do.''

International distributors have shown interest in The Black Sun and the trio is currently in the process of looking for investors.

All-Girl Rock Band the Runaways

Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning prove they are the Queens Of Noise in a biopic about 70s all-girl rock band The Runaways. The career of The Runaways was short lived, spanning only five years, but the impact they had on the music industry was immense. The all-girl teenage rock band helmed six albums and several hit singles such as Cherry Bomb, Queens Of Noise and Born To Be Bad, and helped shape female rock icon Joan Jett. Yet it was a dirty, tumultuous ride as shown in The Runaways, the directorial debut from Floria Sigismondi.

Set in Southern California in the mid-70s, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is a shy and sulky glue-sniffer who dreams of becoming a rock star like Suzi Quatro. She takes that burning ambition to music promoter Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) and after pitching him the idea of starting an all-girl rock band, he starts to recruit teenage girls for The Runaways. He and Jett find their front woman in the stylish and dreamy Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) and the young women are soon subjected to a rigorous training regimen where Fowley teaches them how to handle rowdy crowds, deal with hecklers and howl, wail and strut in a passionate brand of macho feminism.

Despite their musical talent, they all play their own instruments and write their own songs, Fowler sees an opportunity and promotes The Runaways as a cocktail of empowerment and exploitation. Dressed in hot pants, heels, jumpsuits and lingerie, the teenage girls become both a fetish and a rebellious rock `n' roll band, and subsequently take off. From homegrown success to global domination, including a huge fan base in Japan, the girls begin to struggle with their meteoric rise to fame, the easy availability of drugs, predatory men, lack of supervision and group dynamics.

The focus of the film is the individual stories of Jett and Currie, who are key members of the group and share an intimate relationship as friends and sometime lovers (which cumulates in a pash between Stewart and Fanning). Coming from a background as a photographer and music video director, Sigismondi has an eye for visuals and her competency in creating this grungy 70s world is similar to Catehrine Harwicke's effort in The Lords Of Dogtown. Her direction of the music scenes, which are all sung and performed by the actors, really captures the electricity of the band and their music. However, that is also her downfall because The Runaways retains a glossy sheen that seems out of place given the events unfolding on screen. The story too has been trimmed and moulded from Currie's autobiography, so that it is just rebellious enough, while skipping over some of the more confronting and compelling issues.

But the crux of The Runaways is the performances, with Shannon delivering a suitably sociopathic turn as Fowley and Alia Shawkat makes the most of her small supporting role. Yet it is Stewart and Fanning who steal the show. In case you did not know already, they make this film their declaration that they are no longer child stars, but rather young-adult actresses who deliver tour de force performances. Fanning's David Bowie-esque Currie is as beautiful contradiction, a vulnerable and undecided teenager off stage and a fierey sex kitten on it. Besides her uncanny resemblance to Jett, Stewart ozzes the rock `n' roll mentality and her brooding, attitude-filled performance is reminiscent of a young James Dean.

Flashy and feisty, The Runaways is an entertaining piece of pop art, but it fails to delve deeper into the real story. For an accurate account see former bassist Victory Tischler-Blue's documentary Edgeplay: A Film About The Runaways. Sure, from a technical perspective it may be one of the worst documentaries I’ve seen, but she captures the band’s truly amazing story in interviews and mind blowing revelations. Watch it. In other news, I interviewed her a few weeks ago and she describes Jett as a “fucking c#nt” so she deserves your props for that.